WASHINGTON, Nov 15: Ann E. Dunwoody, after 33 years in the army, ascended on Friday to a peak never before reached by a woman in the US military: four-star general.

At an emotional promotion ceremony, Dunwoody looked back on her years in uniform, said it was a credit to the Army – and a great surprise to her – that she would make history in a male-dominated military.

“Thirty-three years after I took the oath as a second lieutenant, I have to tell you this is not exactly how I envisioned my life unfolding,” she told a standing-room-only auditorium. “Even as a young kid, all I ever wanted to do was teach physical education and raise a family.

“It was clear to me that my army experience was just going to be a two-year detour en route to my fitness profession,” she added. “So when asked, ‘Ann, did you ever think you were going to be a general officer, to say nothing about a four-star?’ I say, ‘Not in my wildest dreams.’”

She added: “There is no one more surprised than I – except, of course, my husband. You know what they say, ‘Behind every successful woman there is an astonished man.’”

In an interview after the ceremony, Gen George Casey, the army’s chief of staff, said that if there was one thing that distinguished Dunwoody it was her lifetime commitment to excelling in uniform.

“If you talk to leaders around the army and say, ‘What do you think about Ann Dunwoody?’ almost unanimously you get: ‘She’s a soldier,’” Casey said.

Dunwoody hails from a family of military men dating back to the 1800s. Her father, 89-year-old Hal Dunwoody – a decorated veteran of World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam – was in the audience, along with the service chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, plus the Joint Chiefs chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen.

On Friday, at Fort Belvoir, Va. — her birthplace — Dunwoody was sworn in as commander of the Army Materiel Command, responsible for equipping, outfitting and arming all US soldiers across the globe.—AP